


You Were A Good Car

by LadyMadrigal



Series: The Kensington Tales [3]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:55:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22642189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyMadrigal/pseuds/LadyMadrigal
Summary: Crowley Deveraux-Gordon learns the real reason his boyfriend Aziraphale Shepard is so reluctant to get rid of his decrepit car.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: The Kensington Tales [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941532
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	You Were A Good Car

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot that was supposed to be a scene in another fic, but took on a life of its own and turned much darker than I intended. 
> 
> Warning for some graphic descriptions of violence and conversion "therapy." 
> 
> If you aren't familiar with "A Winter's Tale," this might not make much sense.

It all started with a panicked late-evening video call from Aziraphale Shepard. 

“C-Crowley?” 

“Angel? You okay?” Crowley Deveraux-Gordon sat up, eyes wide. His boyfriend looked – and sounded - like he was crying. He was already on edge waiting for Aziraphale to get back from Tadfield. Always too sweet for his own good, his angel had volunteered to drive the office manager up to her son’s house near the airbase there. 

“N-not really. I’m l-lost and n-now I’m stranded…” Aziraphale sniffled, very obviously crying by now. He’d just had an absolute disaster of a day that had culminated in this. “I c-can’t even ask you to come get me because I-I don’t know where I am!”

“Is that Zira, darling?” His cousin-in-law Freddie – as in Mercury – inquired, coming over.

“Is he okay?” Freddie’s wife (and Crowley’s cousin) Tianna said anxiously. 

“No. Angel, sweetheart, is there anything nearby like maybe a sign or something?”

Aziraphale shook his head. “J-just trees…”

“Wait. I’m on it.” Tianna had insisted on putting a “friends and family” app on everyone’s phone that would let them know where everyone else was. “Zira, honey, hold on. I’m tracking you. Don’t worry, we’ll find you.”

“Darling, did your car break down again?” Freddie said worriedly.

Aziraphale nodded. “I don’t know what happened. It just – I stepped on the gas and there was this awful clunk and now I’ve got no power at all. I c-can’t get it to go more than a crawl and it t-takes forever to get to that…”

“Oh baby. I thought the transmission was going out.” Crowley’s voice was worried rather than angry. He hadn’t been sure and Aziraphale had wanted to try to save up a little more money before going car shopping. 

“Oh crap. Baby, you are in the middle of nowhere…” Tianna said. “But we’ll be there as soon as we can, sweetie. Don’t panic.”

Aziraphale was already panicking. “My ph-phone’s dying and I don’t have my cable…you’re never going to find me, no one is…”

“We’ll be there. I saved your location. We’ll find you, sweetie,” Tianna promised. “Hang tight, we’re on our way.” As she spoke, though, they lost the signal as Aziraphale’s phone died. 

“I hope he heard that…” Crowley said fretfully, already running to find his keys. 

“I’ll drive,” Tianna said, thinking that Aziraphale was going to need a lot of snuggles on the way back. She knew she would if she had she been in his position. 

~*~

Aziraphale hadn’t heard that. He stared at his now-dead phone in horror for about ten seconds, then buried his face in his hands, trying his best not to sob out loud. He was terrified. The car still actually started, but wouldn’t move. Even flooring the accelerator only made it inch forward, shuddering and protesting as it did. It was full dark by then, heavily clouded, with no moon even if it had been clear. Plus, it was cold out. Really cold. And the cabin fan hadn’t worked in his now-incapacitated Mini for months, so no heat. 

And there was no way they were going to find him. He was sure he’d be dead by morning, either frozen to death or at the hands of some wild animal or serial killer. 

He had no idea what had happened to it – he really didn’t know anything about cars besides the fact that you turned the key and it was supposed to go. Yes, key. His Mini was close to twenty years old, and had been what Tianna termed a “beater” when he’d bought it with what little money he’d managed to somehow hide from his father. It had never really run right. But it was his, the first thing that he could truly say ever had been. And it had quite literally saved his life. It had been his escape after he was sent to a “Christian Re-Education Centre” run by a frightening man named Shadwell. A man who promised to “make good Godly men” out of the boys sent there under the guise of a summer sleepaway camp.

It wasn’t a camp. It was conversion “therapy.” His father was determined to have Godly sons even if it meant beatings, electrical shocks and being prayed over while nearly being drowned in order to “drive out Satan.” And that was just the first day. 

He’d escaped after about a week, helped out by a delivery driver named Newt, who had smuggled him and several others, the ones over sixteen, out in a laundry truck. He’d bought the Mini from Newt’s girlfriend Anathema, who had gotten it registered in his name. From there he’d made it to London and spent a couple of very cold months living in it until he finally found a job – and Gabriel. By the time Gabriel tired of him, he’d gotten a better job with Jim Beach and was able to find a small place of his own. 

And then he’d found Crowley, and the Queenies, as Maddy called them, as well as Holly and Maddy herself. And realized along the way that he’d found a family of sorts after all. 

He still couldn’t believe that they’d taken him in the way they had. 

And then Crowley had fallen in love with him. Except this time, it wasn’t like Gabriel. Gabriel had expected to be waited on, served, catered to. He had demanded it. And it never occurred to Aziraphale to ask for anything in return. He had to earn it, the roof over his head, the food he ate, everything. But he was used to that. 

Then Gabriel tired of him and cut him loose.

And then Crowley walked into Jim’s office that day and eventually, into his life. 

Crowley, who was everything his father had railed against. And who fell in love with him, wanting nothing except Aziraphale’s love in return, but only if it were freely given, who didn’t care if the flat wasn’t perfectly clean, the laundry wasn’t done and dinner wasn’t on the table when he walked in the door, as long as he had his angel there to snuggle with. 

Crowley, who was, in fact, happy to do the laundry and clean up while Aziraphale, who was arguably the better cook of the two, made dinner. And who insisted on doing the dishes afterwards in return, before snuggling with him to watch TV for awhile, or playing him some song he was working on, or just hanging out with him, talking, before they went to bed. As for that part of it, well, he was just as gentle and considerate in bed as out, insisting that it was nothing less than what his angel should expect. 

Aziraphale had never believed love could be like this. 

He hoped they could find him before it was too late.

~*~

“I wish he’d just get rid of that car already,” Crowley grumbled. He was actually angry with himself for second-guessing himself that something was truly wrong with Aziraphale’s car several weeks earlier. He really didn’t think he could ever be angry with Aziraphale. 

"I think he’s going to have to,” Tianna said. “From what he described, it doesn’t sound good. Why is he so attached to it, anyway?”

“I have no idea. I asked him once and he wouldn’t tell me.” That was after he’d dropped a couple of paychecks’ worth of money on getting a wheel bearing replaced. “And take the next exit. According to this thing.”

“How much further?”

“Says two miles. Poor baby. I hope he knows we wouldn’t just leave him. Although I would like to leave that car of his in a ditch somewhere.”

“I’m just glad he wasn’t on the motorway when it happened,” Tianna said. “That could have been deadly.”

“Or he might have gotten help sooner. Turn right. Okay, now keep an eye out – bugger. This road is dark.” It didn’t help that Aziraphale’s disabled car was black. 

“Wait. Is that…?” Tianna’s highbeams had picked out a dull flash of metal and glass.

“That’s it!” Crowley didn’t mean to yell, but he did. He was out of the car almost before it stopped. “Angel!”

~*~

Aziraphale started awake at the glare of headlights, shaking with terror, thinking that Shadwell had tracked him down and was going to haul him back to “camp.” He cringed, trying to hide.

“Angel?!”

"C-Crowley?!” Aziraphale fumbled for the door handle and tried to scramble out, but he was so cold and stiff from falling asleep in his car that he fell, landing hard. 

“Gotcha!” Crowley pulled him to his feet, enveloping him in a big and very welcome hug. 

Aziraphale clung to him. “Crowley, th-thank God you’re here…” he said shakily. He was nearly hypothermic from falling asleep in his disabled car in below-freezing weather, and he of course didn’t have on a heavy enough coat. 

“Baby…” Crowley hugged him tighter, wrapping Aziraphale up in his coat as well as his embrace. 

“Babe, what happened to it?” Tianna said, getting in and starting the Mini. 

“It just – wouldn’t go.” Aziraphale didn’t know how to put it. 

Tianna put it in gear and stepped on the accelerator, with the same horrid clunk and not much else.

“Oh, baby, it’s dead,” she said. “It’s the transmission. It’s toast.”

“Can they fix it?” Aziraphale really didn’t even know what the transmission was or what it did, although he gathered it had something to do with making the car move.

“Not this. You’re going to have to get a new car, sweetie,” Crowley said. 

“Are y-you sure?” Aziraphale looked at them, his blue eyes wide and stricken. He looked almost like someone had told him he was about to lose a beloved pet. 

Crowley kissed his forehead. “Why are you so attached to this car, love?” 

Aziraphale hid his face against Crowley’s shoulder. “Are you sure that they…?”

“Baby, it’s no use. This thing’s a wreck,” Tianna said. “Why are you so attached to it, anyway? You keep putting money into it when you should get a new one.”

“It saved my life,” he said softly. “It got me away from home. After they put me in conversion th—” He put his hands over his mouth, horrified, but it was too late.

“They sent you to conversion therapy?!” Tianna and Crowley exclaimed, more or less in unison. They were equally horrified, but for a very different reason.

Aziraphale nodded. “I was there a w-week before I got away. It was horrible. Someone got a bunch of us out. They helped me get a car and I – ran. I got to London, but I had nothing else, I was broke. I couldn’t even get petrol. I had to sleep in it for two months until I found a job.” He looked away. 

“Oh no, baby. How could they?” Tianna came over, taking his hands. Crowley still had his arms around him from behind, holding tight. 

“They kept telling me how ashamed my parents were of me. What a disgrace I was. They…tried to baptize it out of me, then when that didn’t work…”

“Oh fuck, angel…” Crowley buried his face in Aziraphale’s white-blonde curls, breathing in his sweet white-chocolate-vanilla scent. “They hurt you.”

“I’m sorry…” Aziraphale put his hands over his face. “I’m so sorry!” He’d started to cry. 

“Baby…” Crowley led him back to the Volvo for warmth – and snuggles – while Tianna set about figuring out what to do about Aziraphale’s car. 

“Rest in peace, squirt,” she said, patting the hood. “You were a good car.”

**Author's Note:**

> The demise of Zira's car is what happened to my eleven-year-old Nissan just before Christmas, except I was on a busy arterial trying to get around a stopped mail truck when it did. I did make it home somehow, but I felt like Crowley trying to hold the flaming Bentley together on the motorway. 
> 
> Rest in peace, Red October. You were a good car. 
> 
> (My new car is named Zira, BTW)


End file.
